Slow Violence: 2023 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Exhibition

The Department of Art and Art History presents Slow Violence, the 2023 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Exhibition, on view April 18 - May 12 at the Coulter Art Gallery. 

This exhibit celebrates the work of four young artists - Michelle Ibarra, Regina Kong, Sarah Panzer and Song Wu - whose imagery imbues with striking visibility realms of experience that have long been treated with neglectful indifference or convenient oblivion by the discourse of socio-cultural hegemony: manifestations of cross-generational female sexuality, intersections of feminine subjectivity and desire, identifications of displacement with a natural world in crisis, and representations of embattled yet resilient physical identity.

The title of the show, Slow Violence, was culled from a book by environmental scholar Rob Nixon, who asks how we can "devise arresting stories, images, and symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects," of the sorts of abuse and trauma that cause devastation and destruction over time rather than with eye-catching immediacy. The creative resistance to and meaningful transformation of such insidious, deep-seated violence lie at the heart of these complex, richly imaginative bodies of work.

Through painting, photography, mixed media and poetry, the artists explore various kinds of tension that exist between the individual self and a larger spatiotemporal context. Their visions find expression in the powerful remembrance of community and family lineage, in discomfiting dystopian fantasy spaces, in the suggestively fragmented materiality of objects, and in delicate encounters with the precarity of the natural world. They invite you to share their deeply concerned critical, contemplative and thought-provoking perspectives on human connectivity.

Join us for the opening reception on Thursday, April 20, 4-6pm.

Coulter Art Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 11:00am - 5:00pm

Curated By: Jonathan Calm

Installation: April 10 - 14, Deinstallation: May 15

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Coulter Art Gallery is located at 355 Roth Way, in the McMurtry Building of the Stanford campus. Visitor parking is free all day on weekends and after 4 pm on weekdays, except by the Oval. Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle.

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